Aestus
by domina tempore
Summary: The Doctor does not always get to chose "if"… sometimes he can only control "how"… post Journey's End.


**Doctor Who:**_ Aestus_

_by: domina tempore_

_Disclaimer: Doctor Who and all of its characters, locations, etc. belong to their respective owners; I'm just borrowing. No copyright infringement intended! _

_Summary: The Doctor does not always get to chose "if"… sometimes he can only control "how"… post Journey's End. _

_Author's Note: I don't know what's wrong with me. Donna is my favorite character; in no way does she deserve any of this. She didn't deserve the ending that they gave her in Journey's End, let alone what these stupid plot daleks put into my head to write. But I had to write the images out, or they'll never leave me. _

_So many apologies to poor Donna, whose brilliance can never be captured (or forgotten)._

*~_|"|_~*

_aestus: "the heat"_

*~_|"|_~*

_(The heat.)_

Oh, the heat! It burns in her head, burning her alive from the inside out; searing at her eyelids and scorching her half-hazy memories of the utterly impossible. She trembles and flails and screams, desperate for relief from this incredible, terrible fire that blackens her skull. She is blind from the pain, and her hands are burned from where they are tangled in her own hair, pressed against her boiling skin. And in the centre of her mind, in the midst of the flames and chaos that wreath everything, a blue box burns.

("It has come! The box; the blue box.")

Standing beside her, a man watches. His hooded eyes are dark and sad, and his mouth set grimly in resignation. Pain carves deep lines into his ageless features. With a great sigh, he reaches out to catch her hands, drawing them away from her head to replace them with his own cool fingers, pressed gently against her temples.

("Donna, look at me.")

She opens her eyes, and for one brief moment she is able to glimpse his face past the burning. It is a face that she knows, features that her eyes were once intimately familiar with. It settles neatly into that empty place in her mind that has been black for so long; and everything makes sense again.

("Spaceman.")

She gasps as her tearful, burning blue eyes look into his, and he knows. She is too far gone, there is nothing he can do to save her this time. For once, he does not get to make the choice whether she will live or die; only the manner in which her death _must_ occur. He may decide whether she will die alone, afraid, and burning; or with her memories intact, in his arms with what little peace that he can offer. He sighs again, the hopelessness of the choice before him pushing him nearly to breaking. His first last words to her come into his head.

("You were brilliant.")

She feels another rush of heat with the shared memory, and light explodes before her eyes with the force of a thousand supernovas.

( "Her mind will burn, and she will _die_.")

…And then there is nothing. Beautiful, glorious stillness. Emptiness. She breathes in once more, and then out again. And there is nothing once more.

("That Donna Noble is _dead_.")

Not today. Today, he has absorbed all of her, every last bit of pain and heat and fractured self. He has taken what was left of her into himself, making the woman and her suffering a permanent part of who he is and giving _her_ the gift of a peaceful death, without fear. Small enough thanks for all she has done for him. He has taken on her pain, and he will carry it forever; until eventually it destroys him.

("I can't stop it!")

He cradles her in his arms, so much like their first last meeting; the first time that he chose to kill her. He presses his face into her ginger hair; and this time, he does what he could never do before for her. He cries, his soul leaking out of him in sparkling drops to catch in her hair.

_("I've lived too long.")_

_fin._

*~_|"|_~*

_A/N: There was originally sort of a longer idea to this that involved her being in a hospital and the staff having no idea what to do, and then the Doctor there…but I couldn't fix the setting right. So this is where it ended up. But I almost think that anything else would have taken away from the point of it. _


End file.
